Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday February 01, 2012 @06:48PM
from the greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts dept.

ananyo writes "In its battle against a sluggish economy, Japan's government is gearing up to make cost savings through a root-and-branch reform of the country's science system, merging some of its most prominent research organizations. Plans approved by the government's cabinet would consolidate the RIKEN network of basic-research laboratories with the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED) and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) — the national funding body. But with few details about the timing, potential cost savings or full implications of the change, many researchers are concerned that it could be a recipe for harsh funding cuts and even greater bureaucracy."

which is not so bright. Especially taken into account that this money may be the pension savings for a lot of people. The self-dependence is the thing which prevents them from developing. They have their own market, just for themself, they have their own financial system and their own science system.

No pressing need for serious reforms, is there? And there is not much time left.

Maybe Japan has a stagnant economy because like the U.S. or Germany, it already is one of the most developed countries in the world. Perhaps the focus should be on building economies that don't require perpetual growth in order to sustain a high quality of life for all citizens. Perpetual growth is impossible. Even with new technologies and innovation, there are only so many resources on this planet.

Japanese economy stagnated awfully, with their productivity prices should have been falling hard and instead they either had stagnating prices or even some rising prices.

Japan's population problem is not worse than of others, Japan needs strong money to buy commodities, which they lack naturally, and if Japanese companies feel they must sell more in nominal terms, they shouldn't be attacking the currency and devaluing it, they should be dropping prices.

You probably are completely ignorant on the fact, that for companies to sell more in devalued dollars is worse than to sell more with reduced prices while money is appreciating - the earnings would buy more and competing would be easier.

Your post makes no sense. First you say they need to stop with Keynesian economics, then you go on about stopping them and their ability to print money. Which is a central keynesian ideal. So which is it?

Oddly Japan seems to be doing fine after learning from their housing bubble in the 90's, which the US didn't learn from. And you believe japanese unemployment is a problem? At 4.3%? Wait, let me guess, you're the same type of person who believes that when it was the same during Bush's term it was disastrous, but during Obama's 10% it was perfectly okay.

I found at RIKEN that the one group was not allowed to talk to the other group at RIKEN in fear one would be copying or taking up time of the other.

As a current RIKEN employee, I can only confirm this. My guess is that the government is slowly trying to wean RIKEN off the big money nipple in a 'death by a thousand cuts' sort of way; seriously downsizing RIKEN risks real political backlash (by Japanese standards, anyway), but nobody other than the affected employees and their friends is going to bat an eyelid about this sort of amalgamation.

RIKEN is doomed long-term, so rather than bleed tens of billions of dollars over a decade or two, it's probably better to help it out of its misery, and I think the government is doing that in the most diplomatic way possible (again, by Japanese standards.)